


(i don't think i can ever) learn how to love you right

by maraudersourwolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Denial of Feelings, Dreams and Nightmares, Feelings Realization, Light Angst, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Prompt Fic, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 15:24:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13149489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersourwolf/pseuds/maraudersourwolf
Summary: “Can you use someone else’s heart to love?” Theo doesn’t recognize his own voice, a broken whisper pleading to whichever god who wants to listen for forgiveness.





	(i don't think i can ever) learn how to love you right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyLittleGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLittleGrim/gifts).



> For the prompt: "Theo asking quietly: 'can you use someone else's heart to love?'" + "You can use someone else's lungs to breathe can't you? Why should the heart be any different"
> 
> This is unbeta'd, so any mistake is completely my own fault.
> 
> I was hearing to Tibulations by Matt Maeson while writing it. Yes, on repeat. Many times.  
> So I recommend hear it while reading it, cause y'know. There's never enough angst.

 

His breath was still ragged, the cold air night cutting his insides merciless.

He looks around, grounding himself in the best way he can. He’s still in the spare room in the Dunbar-Greyer’s house. If he tuns his hearing he can most probably be able to recognize three slow beating hearts sleeping, something he already tried to do but failed, his emotions all over the place. After a few seconds, he sucks a breath harshly, feeling the tears pool at the corner of his eyes but he doesn’t let them fall.

Nightmares are still taking the best of him. He thought that after a while, the way hell clasped his claws on him and dragged him back down would be more bereable. He should have known best. His brain is an endless supply of fear and regret crippling his insides.

Rolling on the bed until he lays down on his left side and looks at the wall in front of him - plain, white, empty, his right hand reaches for it, the pad of his fingers pressing against the surface. Theo wishes he could be a plain white empty wall, that he could take the ugly, dirty, tainted self and throw it away. But he can’t. His fingertips drag slowly in the surface and he remembers the time he fell, nails scratching the cement floor. He draws his hand to his chest, stopping at his  sternum where his heart should be. Instead, there’s Tara’s.

For a little moment, he tries to remember his life before he got corrupted, before the real choices were taken out of his hands and he was left with just a bunch of regret and blood covering them. But he finds himself unable to reach the warmth, the smiles, the everything he broke away when he was too naive to understand. There should be love in sepia shades but instead there’s a hollow darkness that let him wondering if any of it was real or if it was just a self taught memory to avoid going crazy under the probation and the experiments.

The door of the room opens almost silently and closes with an almost unaudible clic. Soft footsteps make the wooden floor creak under the slightly change of pressure. The matress groans as it dips under someone’s weight, but Theo keeps his eyes on the wall. There’s no touch but they’re close enough and Theo lets the warmth of the new body soothe his aching insides.

“Did you have another nightmare?”

The voice is thick with sleep and for a second Theo wonders how’s even possible that Liam can pick up the change even when he’s asleep and if that isn’t something fucked up to do. He doesn’t answer, the air heavy with the smell of fear and guilt and the salty scent of unshreded tears and sweat.

“Was it your sister?,” Liam’s whispers softly as if he’s afraid that voicing it in any other way would summon Tara and let her drag Theo back into underground again. Theo shakes his head, not trusting his voice to stay calm enough to use proper words. 

“Okay, scoot over.“ 

Theo’s too tired to even try to snap or make fun of Liam for doing this, for treating him like a kid that’s scared of the dark. Life’s what scares him but he will never say anything about it. He does nothing more than move closer to the wall, leaving enough space in the bed for another body to crawl in. The cold in the sheets and the way his knees collide slightly with the surface in front of him diverts his thoughts. He should ask himself why is he doing this, but the answers burns every time and he wants to ignore it as long as possible. There’s a shuffling behind him and he just closes his eyes when the bed dips completely. Their backs are touching, shoulders bumps together and Theo just basks himself in the warmth and the touch he was craving. 

Minutes are drown in the dense nothingless of silence and he feels like he’s choking but he can’t reach out for air even if he wants to. There are ghostly hands pressing at his neck but he doesn’t claw them away, just welcome them as every night. How much time passes, he doesn’t know. Liam doesn’t push as always and Theo is just at loss of how to act; the script teared apart in front of his eyes. He swallows and tries to fill his lungs with enough air but he’s assaulted with Liam’s scent - musky, spicy, pine needles and grass, a thunderstorm to happen, an explotion at the bottom of his heart. His mouth opens before he can catch up and words flee from it before he can even stop and make them captives again.

“Can you use someone else’s heart to love?” Theo doesn’t recognize his own voice, a broken whisper pleading to whichever god who wants to listen for forgiveness. The guilt unpleasantly pins him down to a mess of emotions he’s still not used to and doesn’t try to handle. This isn’t his love to feel. So used to taking away what he wants but this, not this. Never this. His eyes are burning and he closes them with so much strenght that the dull pain of a headache starts to form.

He doesn’t expects an answer, he never does. The quiet is enough to make him forget about the thin fortress he built around himself and let go. The darkness of the room matching the one inside of him. There’s shuffling and two strong arms that chain him back to reality. He wants to cry, he wants to scream. But he melts under the so much needed protection. He’s raw, he’s broken. He’s his own worst enemy.

“You can use someone elses lungs to breathe, can’t you? Why should the heart be any different?” Liam whispers, face in the back of Theo’s head and there’s a shiver that disarms the chimera even more. If it’s his or Liam’s, he doesn’t care. The arms around him tighten before a firm kiss is planted into one of his shoulders, an unexpected collision that leaves Theo at loss of words. Liam’s mouth lingering there, his breath ghosting over Theo’s skin. 

He wants to retort and say that the heart in his chest is tainted with innocent blood, that he was corrupted beyond regonition. He wants to yell that he doesn’t understand this feeling blooming inside him and that he doesn’t know which lead to take, if run as far as he can and hide or let himself fall and nest in it. He wants to claw and growl and cry and scream and suffer endlessly because he only deserves that. 

The choices are taken out of his hands, this time by a forehead on his shoulder and a soft murmur that repeats over and over again that it wasn’t his fault. The scent in the air lingering with mixed chemosignals - fear, confusion, pain, and something he can’t identify but wants to drown into. Liam isn’t pushing but pulling, Theo understands now. They were building towards this for a long time. He was trying to ignore it even before that.

There’s a whimper at the back of his throat and he finds himself pleading again for forgiveness, this time to his sister. Because this isn’t his heart nor his love but he wants it to be. Oh, he wants it so bad. He knows Hell will reunite them at the end and she will rip it out over and over, taking what’s hers, but Theo will get to keep a small something for himself and that’s more than enough. More that he could ever ask for.

So he settles down in Liam’s embrace and lets himself fall.


End file.
